Friday, 18 August

Formula Student team unveil car

The 2014 Formula Student team has unveiled the car that they will be taking to Silverstone and Hungary for the international SAE Formula Student Competition.

Formula Student sees universities from across the globe design and build a single seater racing car in order to compete in static and dynamic events, which demonstrate their understanding and test the performance of the vehicle.

Commenting on this year’s competition third year MEng student, Emily Rainford, said: “Formula Student is a great opportunity to compete at an international level, working in a competitive and professional arena with teams from all around the world.

“We have high hopes for this year’s design and are looking forward to pushing the car to its limits on the race track.”

The car will be raced first at Silverstone in July before the team take it out to Hungary in August. Competitors are scored on areas including endurance, technical, safety, design, cost, sustainability and business.

Lecturer, Dan Hibbert, who leads the team of third and fourth year engineering students responsible for building, driving and maintaining the car, said: “Last year’s car was a great success. The University of Liverpool team has enjoyed a top ranking in an increasingly competitive field of international universities for two years in a row now, so it would be fantastic to continue that with a great performance this year.”

The car which came 6th out of the UK teams in 2013 has recently been on display in the University’s pop-up shop in Liverpool One. The shop, which has been created as part of the International Festival for Business, gives visitors the chance to see what happens at the University and is featuring a live feed showing engineering students working on this year’s car design.

The car launch event was very kindly supported by the Virtual Engineering Centre and Virtalis whose efforts allowed guests to be able to interact with the latest design of the car in immersive virtual reality.